The Pros & Cons Of Running An Old Diesel On Used Vegetable Oil

say hello to miles the world's most glorious skoda octavia the car runs on diesel achieves around 75 mpg on the motorway and is good for well over 800 miles on one tank of careful driving because miles is an older diesel vehicle you can forget about expensive trips to the fuel station because guess what this car will run on nothing but waste vegetable oil you know the stuff you use to fry your chips with so to prove it and to show you the many pros and a few cons that's exactly what I'll be doing today right now before we get started a quick disclaimer I haven't done this this method of purifying use vegetable oil for around 15 years I used to do it and I used to work at Domino's when I used to get loads of oil from fish and chip shops but I'm going to do is use one 100 liter vats I've got three 20 liter containers full of used vegetable oil you can see - from a fish and chip shop and one from a Chinese shop so we're going to start off straining the crude stuff into this red bucket then we're gonna strain it again properly probably by doubling this up into here and then you have to let it settle for about a week it's effectively just cutting nettings which i think will do the trick it's also good for robbing banks I reckon go round one out put that like so just using a bungee rope here ah well it's going swimmingly it has filtered out some crispy bits of deep-fried chicken and all the rest of it this was free from the Chinese shop and for the fish and chip shop I paid five pounds for 20 litres [Music] after the initial filtration it's now time to attack this waste vegetable oil for a second time again I'm no expert in this field but I am pretty skilled with a pair of scissors Wow good job Alex four times the filtration as its initial run as you can see there's a lot of crap that floats about in waste vegetable oil which not only looks rough but smells rough too free diesel I like to call it phrasal after a week and a half of letting my fries all settle I returned with Jay cloths and more buckets to transform this clean ish waste vegetable oil into liquid gold because let me tell you this is not the kind of crap you want your injectors to deal with with around 12 liters of waste vegetable oil now clean it's time to film miles up with this liquid gold and because I want to do this right that means completely draining all 50 litres of diesel that's currently in the tank and how hard can that be it's just not pouring out ah these Wilbert this is this is not going well okay because we're no good at stealing fuel and because I didn't know about miles is pesky anti-siphon valve it was time to call in the reinforcements Hugh Alex Bergeron of wrong fuel doctor who hooked up a pipe to the fuel pump return line to drain the tank in 20 minutes flat to prove that the tank is completely empty Alex lifts the cover under the rear bench and drains direct from miles his stomach with the fuel tank dry all that's left to do is to pour my pure freeze all straight in and fire miles up lovely ladies and gentlemen I am currently driving miles on nothing but waste vegetable oil sounds exactly the same you would literally not know that I was driving this car on use chip fat it's incredible so with miles now running happily on nothing but pure waste vegetable oil what you are probably wondering are the pros and cons of doing the same okay so I've been driving miles the high mileage hero for around an hour now and had I not known that there was no diesel in here that it was only running on used vegetable oil I wouldn't be any the wiser the car runs exactly the same accelerates the same sounds the same feels the same the only real giveaway is the smell and also underneath the bonnet the true giveaway is that when you have a look at this clear fuel line here you'll notice that the fuel is slightly darker apart from that it's just like diesel the benefits of using waste vegetable oil in your old diesel car don't only end there because the emissions that come out of the exhaust go down namely hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide is reduced but on the flip side nitrous oxide does increase ever ever so slightly and nitrous oxide is responsible for stuff like acid rain and smog but at the end of the day using this stuff in your diesel is better for the environment and it actually smells pretty good it's kind of a hint of chip shop with a hint of environmental friendliness now there are some drawbacks with using waste vegetable oil in your diesel car and the first thing you need to know about vegetable oil is that it is more viscous that means it is thicker than diesel and more thick fuel means that your fuel pump needs to work harder which puts extra strain on it your injectors can also get clogged up a lot more quickly also if you're trying to do cold starts on just vegetable oil then your engine is going to have a bad time again your fuel pumps going to suffer and the final thing you need to know about vegetable oil is that it has a less calorific value which means it effectively has less energy than diesel and less energy means that you're going to get worse fuel consumption compared to diesel ok so obviously the two biggest benefits of running your car on used vegetable oil are one that it is environmentally friendly because it is the alt form of recycling and to the cost because you're gonna save yourself a lot of money which I want to talk about now so let's do some quick math and say that I Drive 10,000 miles per year in a car that averages 40 mpg over 12 months of filling up with diesel at one pound 31 my total fuel expenditure will be one thousand four hundred and eighty eight pounds now say that you spend five pounds per 20 liters of used vegetable oil exactly like I did that works out at only 25 people eater giving me a yearly fuel price of only 284 pounds saving me a whopping one thousand two hundred and four pounds which I could spend on modifying miles I could give him stance because stance will make her dance so it all sounds simple right well no actually because there is a slight catch you can't run a car on use vegetable oil just like that without doing any modifications a popular modification vegetable oil car aficionados do is to install an extra fuel tank usually where the spare wheel would go and into which you pour your vegetable oil and when you get up to temperature when you're running on diesel you flick a switch and then your car will chug happily on vegetable oil when it comes to switching off all you do is then flick that switch again and then that reverse back to diesel which means that your injectors and everything are cleaned out with vegetable oil for the purposes of this test I am running miles on just waste vegetable oil I'm gonna be filling him up with some diesel which means that I'll be running on diesel by the time that miles is switched off so I don't damage anything because miles has to run forever in terms of the negatives with using waste vegetable oil the biggest drawback for people will be time and mess for starters you need to source the oil buy the containers and filters and then get to work cleaning it up to around 5 microns for context the hair on your head is around a hundred microns in diameter if you own an old diesel and like the idea of free fuel then look online to make sure that your car can handle its old Mercedes many old French diesels and vhe group cars like miles will chug happily on the stuff but check online first before committing there is also a very useful book you can buy called from the fryer to the fuel tank which tells you everything about converting a car it tells you everything about the chemistry of waste vegetable oil otherwise if you check out a website called veg oil car co uk he's pretty much an expert and in the UK at least you can use up to two and a half thousand liters of the good stuff of the liquid gold without having to pay any tax just keep a record of how much you're using in case the cops do decide to ask questions because if they're behind you they're definitely gonna smell it but if you're within two and a half thousand litres of used vegetable oil then you're saving a lot of money you're legal and you're also doing a lot of good for the environment and it's just such a great feeling knowing that your diesel engine is running on something that was designed to be thrown away and don't forget that Rudolf diesel the guy who invented the diesel engine designed this car to run on vegetable oil so we've come full circle so to you mister diesel I know you're dead now thank you very much because I am currently spending very little on fuel and reaping all of the rewards so to answer the question should you run your old diesel car on waste vegetable oil the answer is gonna be yes right I mean it's good for the environment more crops don't need to be produced to make this stuff it is awesome for your wallet and from my days driving a Peugeot 405 on waste vegetable oil one thing that I will never forget is being tailgated and when you're being tailgated when you drive on waste vegetable oil all you need to do rock it down again floor it and then admire the big black smoke of chip fat behind you haha take that 3:56 in the morning behind me is miles of high mileage hero the plan of attack is to drive to the Nurburgring do a lap of the Ring and then drive all the way back in one day a one tanker diesel 835 miles

Channel: Car Throttle

Views: 1,888,654

Rating: 4.9263539 out of 5

Keywords: Car Throttle, CarThrottle, Alex Kersten, Veg Oil, Diesel, Syphon, High Miles, Skoda, Octavia, Eco Friendly, Cheap Fuel, Free Fuel, Recycling

Id: WNJH1rikujI

Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 01 2018

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